Bending The Spiral of Ecological Degradation Toward Agro-Ecological Resilience
Fertilizer use in food crop production, though a major
driver for yield increase in modern agriculture, has
often involved only N, P and K. The VFRC envisions a
significant opportunity in the addition of micronutrients
to fertilizers for boosting yields from both poor and
several richer soils with long-term sustainability
implications. Because micronutrients can also improve
plants’ uptake of macronutrients, their use enables
reduced application of N, P and K fertilizers, mitigating
greenhouse gases emissions and losses to water bodies.
Increased amounts of micronutrients help plants to
fight biotic and abiotic stresses, such as tolerating
drought and resisting attacks by pests and pathogens.
The resilience of the production system can be further
enhanced by returning part of the increased biomass to
the soil, improving soil health with increased capacity
to hold water and nutrients beneficial for plant growth.
Importantly, micronutrient-enhanced fertilizers could
provide another route to improving human health.
Many governments are already fortifying food items;
this micronutrient initiative provides an additional and
new approach that will not only revive yields and reduce
costs for farmers, but it will also tackle hidden hunger
that hampers human development in many countries
across the world.
Figure 12. Deficiencies of micronutrients are increasingly observed in areas of high
intensity cropping in cereal, oilseed, pulse and vegetable crops.
Micronutrients can be a mega-mover of the
local and global food system.
This “balanced fertilizer” approach would be an important
step forward: limited fertilizer use in Africa has left vast
amounts of arable land with a serious lack of nutrients.35
Farmers in India have been using N fertilizers for decades,
and to a lesser extent P and K, but without replenishing
the micronutrients that crops extract from the soil.
Appropriate micronutrient-supplemented NPK fertilizer
applications could help revive the flattening off of yields
in India and several other countries (Figure 12).36
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